Learn Spanish for Free Before Your Latin America Vacation

Most of you have probably experienced somehting like it. You’re stumbling along in a mixture of English and phrasebook Spanish trying to communicate with a vendor whose selection of textiles is like nothing you’ve ever seen. You buy a beautiful piece and he offers to show you the workshop where his whole family work together to complete these fantastic works of art. Unfortunately, you miss out on this unique opportunity because you don’t understand Spanish well enough to know what he’s saying. In the end you continue, never knowing how much more enriching your travel experience might have been.

With a little more vocabulary and practice, your language comprehension increases as do the possibilities of having even more memorable local experiences. Wouldn’t it be great to have more than a basic knowledge of the language before heading off on your trip?

Thanks to the folks at Duolingo, you can start learning a language today – for free. Duolingo offers courses in Spanish and Portuguese ensuring you have a linguistic head-start before touching down in Latin America. The site also offers courses in Italian, French, German, Russian and English among many others. Duolingo looks fantastic, the design, images and interface combine to make a user-friendly format which makes learning a language fun.

A Simple, Effective & Fun Way to Learn a New Language

The site uses a combination of interactive activities to increase the user’s competence in reading, writing, listening, speaking and comprehension. You can learn at your own rate and even have Duolingo remind you to take a daily lesson if you wish.

Duolingo has turned the language learning process into a game. At the beginning of each lesson, you start with 4 hearts. With each incorrect answer, you lose a heart. Lose five hearts and you must start the lesson again from the beginning. If you complete the lesson with all hearts intact, you earn extra points.

Starting with the basics, lessons gradually incorporate more vocabulary and expand the user’s comprehension of verbs and tenses. Lessons incorporate the vocabulary and concepts taught in prior levels, therefore, you are constantly practicing what you have learned. Your knowledge of words and concepts is graded depending on your answers. If you leave it a few weeks between lessons, your skill level can slowly erode in particular concepts such as “plurals”, “present tense”, etc. Duolingo has a practice feature which allows you to brush up on your skills, regain those skill points and even gain some bonus points too.

If you complete any of the Duolingo language courses the sites claims you will come away with a High-Intermediate Level of proficiency.

A Classroom in Your Pocket

Signing up is easy with your Facebook account, Google+ account or with your email address.

You have access to Duolingo lessons wherever you are with free apps for iOS, Android and Windows phone and a handy offline mode for when you’re without internet access. Sign up with Duolingo, start learning today and get even more out of your Latin America vacation.